1963 was an important year in Japanese art.  It marks roughly a decade after the end of the American occupation of Japan in 1952, and the last year of the Yomiuri Indépendant Exhibition, which provided a forum for some of the most experimental and controversial artists to emerge in this rich period of cultural growth.1  1963 also marks the year in which Dr. Roland Gibson, an American Professor of Economics and avid art collector, visited Japan and met with various key figures to build his collection.  His major collection, which he later donated to the gallery that now bears his name, comprises the survey exhibition, Resounding Spirit: Japanese Contemporary Art of the 1960s, and highlights important thematic and stylistic currents in the postwar movement.  The collection of the Roland Gibson Gallery, at the State University of New York in Potsdam is unique in North America, and the Resounding Spirit touring exhibition constitutes the first major exhibition of avant-garde art from this period in Japanese history to be seen in Canada.

      Postwar artists in Japan entered into dialogue with major art movements emerging in Europe and the United States, while defining unique voices that echoed internationally as the period progressed.  The period from 1945 to 1970 is characterized by artists’ rejection of modern institutions in Japan and by their socio-political challenges to the status quo.  Challenging the relationship between the local and the international, the traditional and the re-invented, and the individual and the collective, this period was a concentration of diverse artistic experimentation that allowed Japan to explode onto the international stage with strength and innovation. 

      The goals of this exhibition web site are to provide a foundation for the context of the postwar period in Japan and a clear and concise overview of key figures, concepts and movements.  This overview will also reveal the importance of both Gibson’s collection and of Resounding Spirit as a representation of the period.  Not only does the collection contain works by key figures such as Shiryu Morita, Jiro Yoshihara and Shuzo Takiguchi, it also documents developments in the varied genres of calligraphy, print, performance and painting, which all underwent enormous changes during this formative period.